Chapter 9 - THE ASHES OF THE PAST
“MOM!”
I screamed so loud my throat tore. I lunged for the car door handle before the SUV even rolled to a stop, but Luca grabbed me around the waist, hauling me back into the seat.
“Let me go!” I fought him wildly, kicking and thrashing. “She’s up there! Luca, she’s in there!”
“Marco, take the wheel! Ram him!” Luca roared.
The heavy armored SUV surged forward, jumping the curb. Carlo Bellini barely had time to turn around before the massive grill of the truck slammed into the side of his black town car, pinning him between the twisted metal and a brick wall.
Luca threw his door open and was out before the truck settled.
He didn’t draw his gun. He grabbed Carlo by the throat with his bare hands and slammed him against the brick wall.
“Where is she?!” Luca bellowed, his voice vibrating with a rage so primal it terrified me.
Carlo laughed, blood bubbling over his teeth. He wheezed, his ribs clearly crushed from the impact.
“She burned, boy,” Carlo smiled wickedly. “Just like your empire is going to burn.”
I threw myself out of the car, sprinting toward the building entrance. Firefighters were screaming, aiming hoses at the third-floor window. The heat was unbearable, blistering my skin even from the sidewalk.
Mia tumbled out behind me, crying hysterically, pointing at the window.
MOM! she signed wildly into the empty air.
I fell to my knees on the pavement. My mother. The woman who had sacrificed everything, who had worked her fingers to the bone, burned alive in a cheap apartment because of a secret she couldn’t escape.
“Natalie!”
I blinked.
The voice didn’t come from the building.
It came from the shadows of the alley across the street.
I turned my head.
Stepping out of the darkness, clutching a worn winter coat around her shoulders, was my mother.
“Mom?!”
I scrambled to my feet and ran across the street, throwing myself into her arms. We collapsed together on the wet asphalt, sobbing so hard we couldn’t breathe. Mia crashed into us a second later, burying her face in my mother’s chest, her hands clinging to her coat like a lifeline.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” my mother wept, kissing our hair over and over again. “I got out. I saw his car pull up and I ran down the fire escape.”
I pulled back, looking at her soot-stained face. “Mom, why didn’t you go to the police? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because he threatened to kill you both if I ever spoke a word,” she sobbed. “He made me watch the apartment burn to remind me what he could do.”
Luca walked across the street. He had left Carlo pinned by the security team. He looked at my mother, his broad shoulders heaving with exhaustion.
“He’s never going to threaten you again, Maria,” Luca said gently.
My mother looked up at the mafia boss. For a moment, I saw the fear in her eyes. But then she looked at how he was standing in front of us—a human shield against the world.
She reached into the pocket of her winter coat.
“Elena’s note,” my mother said quietly. “He said she had a deed.”
Luca frowned. “My mother? What deed?”
My mother pulled out a thick, folded piece of legal parchment. It was yellowed with age, sealed with a red wax stamp.
“When your father died, Elena came to me,” my mother explained, handing the paper to Luca. “She knew Carlo was going to take over the territory. She knew he would come for us. So she bought this apartment building under a shell company and let us live here for practically nothing. She paid Vanessa to keep an eye on us. Elena wasn’t torturing us, Luca. She was hiding us from the Commission.”
Luca took the parchment. He unfolded it.
I read it over his shoulder.
It wasn’t just the deed to the apartment building.
It was a trust fund document. Signed by Elena Moretti.
“The Moretti Foundation,” Luca read aloud, his voice thick with emotion, “hereby places fifty percent of all charitable holdings into a blind trust for the surviving children of the Moretti and Brooks families, to be accessed upon their eighteenth birthdays.”
My jaw dropped.
“She didn’t steal the charity money,” I whispered. “She hid it for us.”
Luca looked at me, a profound sense of peace finally washing over his bruised face. The burden of his father’s sins, the guilt he had carried for fourteen years, slowly began to lift.
He turned around.
The police sirens were wailing in the distance, growing louder. Marco had tied Carlo Bellini to the bumper of the town car, leaving him for the authorities.
Luca walked over to Mia. He knelt down so he was at her eye level.
He didn’t use his voice. He raised his hands, clumsy but deliberate, and signed the words he had asked me to teach him weeks ago.
You are safe now. I promise.
Mia’s eyes widened. She looked at me, then back at Luca. She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him with all the fierce, stubborn love she possessed.
Luca hugged her back, burying his face in her shoulder.
When he stood up, he looked at me.
“The foundation is yours, Natalie,” Luca said softly. “You and Mia. You’re going to build that library. You’re going to build whatever she wants.”
“What about you?” I asked, my heart fluttering against my ribs.
Luca stepped closer, wiping a streak of soot from my cheek with his thumb.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure no one ever hurts my family again.”
He leaned in, and as the red and blue lights of the police cruisers illuminated the night, he kissed me. It wasn’t the kiss of a boss, or a savior. It was the kiss of a man who had finally found his home.
The nightmare was over. We were safe.
But as Marco jogged over to hand Luca Carlo’s confiscated belongings, a small, silver object slipped from Carlo’s pocket and clattered onto the pavement.
It was a silver key, completely identical to the one Elena had placed on the table hours ago.
May you like
But attached to it was a tag with a single name written on it.
Vanessa.
